Remembering to Be with Chopin's Prelude No. 7
How To Use This Video
When you feel anxious and stressed out, your sympathetic nervous system is probably in overdrive. Slow, gentle breathing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to calm the sympathetic nervous system and, at the same time, it stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for relaxation, healing, and regeneration of all your body’s systems. Most people inhale and exhale around 14 times per minute, but research shows that breathing half that rate, or even slower, can have many positive effects on the body and mind. This video guides you to breathe at a rate of about 6 to 7 times per minute. If you haven’t done controlled breathing before, you may want to try it for just a minute or so at first and then relax and watch the rest of the video while breathing naturally.
All you do is breathe along with the video, gently breathing in as the circle of light approaches, and gently exhaling fully as it recedes. Try allowing your gaze to rest gently on the horizon where the movement originates and see what it’s like to let the rays of colored light wash over you, and allow the circle of light to come and go in the periphery of your awareness without focusing on it. (Please note: The effect of the video will be more powerful if you make it full screen and listen through headphones or earbuds).
There are many other ways you can “play” with this video. As you inhale and exhale, you may notice that the rays of colored light streaming toward you have a particular effect on your body. You may notice that as the circle of light approaches it seems to slow down and you might notice that has an effect on your breathing. As the circle of light fades into the distance and disappears, you may notice a subtle sense of rest or relaxation during its momentary absence.
You can also play with how you listen to the music – shifting your attention to different elements of the melody – the harp, flute, oboe, or strings – and on any sensations in your body or mind associated with the music. And of course, you can come up with your own ways to attend to the sounds and images as you relax and breathe with the video.
You may notice that certain sounds are “more” pleasant while others are “less” pleasant. Our brains are programmed to cling to what is pleasant and push away what appears to be unpleasant. You can practice just noticing these automatic conditioned reactions. Finding a calm, neutral way to observe both pleasant and unpleasant sounds can actually help you to have greater equanimity with regard to various events of your day.
There’s no right or wrong, good or bad, about what you notice or don’t notice. The power of the practice lies simply in the gentle noticing of whatever it is - free of judgment, agenda, or any need for it to be different than it is.
Remembering to Be Throughout the Day
This video, and all our videos, are an invitation to take a mindful pause amidst the busy-ness of your day, to step off the treadmill of always needing to get things done and rushing to get somewhere else. Such pauses allow our brain and nervous system to shift to a calmer, more harmonious state, which not only feels good, but makes us far more effective in whatever we’re doing.
The idea of taking a break during the day has taken a variety of forms in recent years. With extended periods of sitting now considered to be “the new smoking,” we’re urged to take short breaks multiple times during the day to get up and move. Apps like Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer, which offer a wide variety of guided meditation and relaxation breaks designed to help us shift from frenetic “doing” mode to a more calm, restful “being” mode, have been steadily gaining in popularity. Some people have been experimenting with a “digital sabbath,” choosing to power down their screens for a week, or a day, or even an hour – something that seems unthinkable to many of us. Others have been practicing intermittent fasting – taking a break of varying lengths from eating.
But for most of us, letting go of the need to be “doing” something all the time turns out to be much harder than it seems. It’s not so easy to just shift into a state of “being” at will. Such attempts often end up as one more item on our to do list that we feel obligated to check off, or feel guilty for not doing.
Perhaps a little brain science can be helpful here. According to the latest research, our nervous system appears to have a natural tendency to move toward a state of greater harmony, integration, and balance . . . when we’re not interfering it. So instead of thinking in terms of “doing” something to get ourselves into a calmer, happier, more relaxed state, we might choose to learn how our thoughts and emotions, cravings and impulses, interfere with this natural tendency, and how we can help to neutralize those interferences so that our nervous system is freer to make the shift it would really like to make – a shift toward a state of ever-increasing balance and harmony.
It is the practice of making this shift that we refer to as “remembering to be.”
About Our Online Course “Train Your Brain, Change Your Life”
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of pausing for your brain and nervous system, and how you can train your brain to be more receptive to experiencing this state of deep peace, contentment, and creativity that we refer to as "open, heartful awareness," you can check out our online course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life.
The course provides practices that support the natural tendency of our brain and nervous system to move toward a state of greater calm and ease. It also provides a larger understanding that makes the practices meaningful. It explains how our outdated, unbalanced brain programing interferes with the experience of open heartful awareness, and how it can be harmonized so as to be supportive rather than an impediment. It includes audios and videos that teach you over two dozen “practices” that help to clear away the obstacles that make open, heartful awareness difficult to access. And it has dozens of one to three-minute guided audios and videos that are perfect for brief breaks during the day.
You can try out our Free Sampler Course, which includes a few of the practices from the full course. We also invite you to check out our Facebook page and YouTube channel where we’ll be posting a wide variety of brief videos designed to balance and harmonize your brain and nervous system in a way that makes it easier to shift to open, heartful awareness.
